The edges of the long vanishing stretch of tarmac are obscured by great swaths of sand, merging it with the desert on either side. Gusts of wind blow lacey waves across our path, dust dancing lightly on the surface, continually in motion, never settling to cover the road. A nine year old boy behind the […]

In the 1940’s Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy attempted to start an architectural revolution. Soon after dedicating himself to rural or ‘peasant’ architecture and starting work with the Nubian Vault roofing and mud brick building techniques, Fathy took on the enormous and not-so envious task of re-locating the inhabitants of the village ‘Gourna’, near Luxor in […]

Words are funny old things (I hope your weren’t expecting a more original opening sentence). I find that words have the ability to provoke the most inappropriate irrational response and I mean solely based on their own merits, nothing to do with the context in which they’re used. Maybe it’s just me but I despise […]

A few weeks back I helped a friend construct a geodesic dome for an islamic art workshop at the V&A in London. There are various ways of triangulating a dome or sphere (I believe the Bucky method produced a dome entirely of equilaterals) and I was not responsible for the calculations in this instance but […]

It always amuses me to see the way in which we ‘allow’ nature into our cities. Always with boundries and constraints; ‘you can live on our streets but you can never leave this three foot square’. I love to see nature breaking these rules, it gives me great pleasure to see a cantankerous old Plane […]

Edge of Arabia is an exhibition organised by community interest company ‘Offscreen’. It is a unique collection of contemporary art from Saudi Arabia, from an art community that is historically non-existent and is now trying to find it’s feet and break through. After the impressive world debut of the Edge of Arabia exhibition in the Palazzo […]

Contrary to popular belief multicoloured balconies are not some kind of definitive answer to designing social housing. Just as multicoloured fins are not all you need for an award winning office façade. It would seem that a multitude of ears perked up when somebody suggested that fluorescent colours might improve our collective disposition. Is this […]